The stakeholder doctrine and corporate governance in business ethics

Corporation Ethical Role

Foundations business ethics: What role business society? The study business ethics study legal application moral standards business decisions. In defining business ethics, defining voluntary role business: a business behave law dictate conduct law permits conduct benefit shareholders harmful ? Business Ethics: Case Studies Selected Readings (7th Edition) Required Reading: Jennings, M.

The problem investigated concerns a comparison of views in what is referred to as a stakeholder's doctrine in management of business. Stakeholders are viewed as owners and capital investors but, under a social democratic perspective, stakeholders comprise of those persons who have a claim upon the existence of an entity. Precise to say these two perspectives have a bearing that require clarification.

How Corporations Came to be

Corporations came to be as an amalgamation of an extensive number of persons with a unified purpose forming a unit that has come to be the modern day organization. According to Jennings, 2009()

, the coming up of corporations is not only concerned with the time period, it trickles down to how they came to be. What factors triggered or were considered for the corporations' existence. According to readings from Jennings (2009)

, corporations are traceable to early day monasteries and towns that yield state corporations and eventually privately owned corporations. Historically earliest business came about in the early 1600s in England as monopolies charted under the crown seeking commercial gains. The corporations world has evolved from state sponsored organizations to privately sponsored businesses with the strict commercial perspective.

Impact of Social Perspective Democracy

It is unbearable to observe that human begins are unyielding to learn from their past mistakes. The time that power was entirely held by states and monarch, the amount of innovations and progress were nil. When the constitution was signed, mankind was little varied from their predecessors in terms of transportation, farming, and almost every other craft Fallon, 2003()

For seventy years, souls of men, public ownerships and socialist democracy were a superior became the specter and menace of communism and promulgated state controls philosophy and economic way of life over systems of capitalism. Yet the wall came down, the former Soviet Union collapsed, and it was seen that the threat, though real in terms of military might, was hollow in terms of the economical.

In China, it has become necessary to allow for individual ownership in order to feed the people. In Europe, the economy of nations are at the point of collapse and bankruptcy because of the over extending of obligations that the government has made to its people, without a sustainable way of meeting those obligations and, yet here in America, we continue to make choices that follow in the way of Europe.

In discussions with others of a different persuasion, the author proposes that the listener wants something really badly, but they don't really need it, and the cost of this object is $100. Then he offers two situations. In the first situation, the listener must go to work, and work hard to earn that extra $100, keeping in mind that they have other obligations. In the second situation, $100 is given as a gift. The author then asks, in which situation, or both, would the listener get the object that they want, but do not need. Invariably the listener chooses the scenario in which the money is given, but not the one where the money is earned.

From this, author has determined that individuals treat hard earned money, with more respect than they do with money that is not their own -- whether that money be borrowed, or gifted. If this is true with one's own money, how is this any different for government workers and the taxpayer's money? Good causes are never-ending in society. Money will never yield to be sufficient to solve all the problems in the world or even the problems of a specific person. This is the destructiveness of the social democratic philosophy -- we give people the notion that they are not responsible, and then tell them that they have rights to receive things that they are entitled to it, without any expectation that there needs to be some contribution toward it Henderson D., 2004()

Communism has been shown as an unsound and invalid lie, and yet the modern socialist still believes that it is the power of the state, the power of the collective that will solve all of the world's problems. While the modern socialist speaks in capitalistic terms, they have shifted the meaning of the terms in order to gain the moral high ground, for the greater good.

Unfortunately, it has been shown that when one cannot control or retain the personal property that one has worked so hard to gain through one's own effort, the motivation to continue to strive and gain more diminishes. The output and effort of person after person reduces because of the burdens placed on the common shoulder because of the demands of the many -- the burden becomes heavier as more and more drop out.

Ultimately the economy collapses because no one is willing or able to carry the load. This is why it seems unrealistic and unbelievable to those who subscribe to a social democratic view that when government cuts taxes on the population, for some unidentifiable reason (to them) tax revenues increase -- while, when the tax burden is increased on those most able to handle it, the actual amount of tax revenue decreases Henderson D., 2004()

The final effect of social democracy is that the state gains total control over a person's efforts and property -- what a person earns is not truly their own. Ultimately, social democracy results in slavery, or the Slavery, 2003()

Idealized Situation

Novak (1997)

makes the case that freedom and liberty is required for a republican view of stakeholder to exist. Freedom must be fought for. Responsibility must be accepted. Work must be enthroned as a higher good -- not just because of the benefits of pay, and insurance -- but because it is only as each individual works, that business can truly grow to provide the jobs, desirable goods, new wealth, and independence that make it essential for the continuation of the American experiment. The form of the corporation and innovation that made America the defender of freedom throughout the world, did not just happen by chance -- it became what it did because of the inventiveness, and drive, and determination, and hard work of a free and responsible people.